Dalton McGuinty

Recently, an article about a sex education program being offered in some Edmonton public schools called Wait! Let’s Talk Sexcame across my twitter. The program is a Christian-inspired, abstinence-based program modelled on curricula currently in effect in many parts of the U.S.

My reaction: Wait, let’s talk public education!

Abstinence education in Canada

How is it that abstinence-based sex-ed is being taught to kids in public schools in Canada?

One can read too much into any by-election result, I suppose. And it's particularly dangerous for a commentator from far away to divine profound truths from the results of an election to which he paid scant attention until the final tally appeared on the Internet.

Still, maybe distance lends an opportunity to see the forest despite all the trees, as the professional pundits of what remains of the mainstream media certainly failed to do in the case of Thursday's five provincial by-elections in Ontario.

The Ontario NDP might someday regret the results of the August 1 byelection.

Voters delivered a clear message: out with the Liberals, down with the PCs.

The NDP won two of the five liberal ridings up for grabs in this byelection. The new MPPs are successful politicians in their own rights: Percy Hatfield was a city councillor in Windsor and Peggy Sattler was a school trustee. Both were running in ridings where the former representatives, Dwight Duncan and Chris Bentley, wore most of the controversy of the $500 million waste in the gas plant scandal.

Who would have thought Alberta, of all places, would end up suffering from Dutch Disease?

Surely it was just weeks ago we Albertans, always ornery and lightning quick to take offence, were excoriating the likes of federal Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair and then-Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty for daring to suggest such a thing might even be possible.

Dutch Disease, as alert readers will recall, is the term coined by the snarky upper-class wits at the U.K.'s Economist magazine back in 1977 to describe what happens when rising revenues from natural resources pump a country's currency to the point its suddenly overpriced manufacturing and export sectors take a beating, with predictably depressing results for jobs and profits.

Demonstrating her political smarts from the get-go, Kathleen Wynne has lost no time in reaching out to Ontario's rebellious teachers. As she well understood, she was not the only victor when Ontario Liberals selected their new leader. The other clear winner was the province's public elementary and secondary teachers. By turning out at the Liberal convention to protest in the tens of thousands, and by being joined by many thousands more of their supporters, the teachers powerfully demonstrated their political muscle.

An aura of mystery hovers around Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. There's two words I doubt you ever expected to hear together (the ones starting with M). Is it possible he needs an intervention? Not a high-rent one like the invasions of Iraq or Afghanistan: a trashy intervention like you see on reality TV. He did say he needs a hug. Is that a cry for help or what?

One might imagine that Alberta premier Alison Redford and Quebec premier Pauline Marois stole the show at the Council of the Federation meetings in Halifax, NS with their announcement -- even before the meetings had officially commenced -- that they had agreed to put together a working group of officials to examine the possibilities of moving oil from Alberta to eastern and Atlantic Canada. In fact, the announcement underscored what was the dominant theme of this gathering of provincial and territorial leaders: energy.

When Alberta's most powerful union -- the Alberta Medical Association, which until yesterday represented the province’s 8,250 physicians in fee negotiations with the province -- slammed the government of Premier Alison Redford just a few days before the April 23 provincial election, they really should have thought about the potential reaction they might get.

Yesterday, they got it. Health Minister Fred Horne told the docs, in effect: Here's your medicine. It won't taste very good. Swallow it anyway and call me in the morning!

By the sound of it, the international observers of Sunday's Ukrainian parliamentary elections did manage to catch the government of President Viktor F. Yanukovich getting up to some undemocratic naughtiness.

Their report, which the international media yesterday described as scathing, accused Yanukovich's Party of Regions of unfairly benefiting from excessive money from supporters, abuse of government resources to make it look good and heavily biased media coverage in its favour.